The NY Times has an opinion piece on demographics and shrinking populations.

China, the most populous country on the planet for centuries, this month reported its first population decline in six decades, a trend that is almost certainly irreversible. By the end of the century China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.

The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s inexorable decline and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic “time bomb” that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations.

There is no doubt that a shrinking global population — a trend expected to set in by the end of this century — poses unprecedented challenges for humanity. China is only the latest and largest major country to join a club that already includes Japan, South Korea, Russia, Italy and others.

And so on. The weird thing is that the sociologist who wrote it, Wang Feng, never mentions the climate issue. How can it make sense to talk about population decline or growth without mentioning what’s happening to the planet this “shrinking global population” lives on? It’s like being on a train approaching a collapsed bridge and talking about service in the dining car.

But the alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature. The glass is at least half full. Shrinking populations are usually part of a natural, inevitable process, and rather than focus excessively on concerns like labor shortages and pension support, we need to look at the brighter spots for our world.

But the trouble is, labor shortages and pension support are going to look like luxury issues as the climate spirals out of control.

Compared to a half-century ago, people in many countries are richer, healthier and better educated and women are more empowered. China’s population, for example, is shrinking and aging, but its people are more educated and have a longer life expectancy than at any time in the country’s history. 

Yes but. There’s that bridge up ahead.

Men brag in public of taking a baby away from her mother as if she were a jacket or an umbrella.

Men using women to gestate babies for them has nothing whatever to do with either democracy or equality.

MPs are afraid to talk about it at all.

In the privacy of a committee room on the parliamentary estate, Labour MPs gather for “top-secret” meetings to discuss the erosion of sex-based rights — and their numbers are growing.

They are part of a cross-party group of “gender-critical” MPs and peers often too frightened to express their views on trans matters publicly for fear of a backlash.

So that’s healthy. Trans ideology is making life steadily worse for women, and the people in charge are afraid even to talk about it.

One MP who attends regularly said the meetings “have to be top-secret or no one would come”. They added: “It’s a way of bringing women and men across the House together to meet secretly to talk about these issues, because they can’t speak out publicly.”

…

[Rosie Duffield] was also briefed against by Matthew Doyle, director of communications for Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, who described the situation with Duffield as “irritating” but insisted it does not do the party “any actual damage”.

In an audio clip released by Guido Fawkes, the right-wing political gossip blog, Doyle, who previously worked for Sir Tony Blair, accused her of doing “incredibly disingenuous things”, adding: “There are people in Canterbury who say it would be nice [for her] to spend a bit more time actually in Canterbury rather than hanging out with JK Rowling.”

Bros before hos, yet again.

So charged is the debate that not one of the dozen Labour MPs I have spoken to this week would go on the record to express their concerns about the party’s equivocal position on the trans and gender issue — not even Harriet Harman, the architect of the Equality Act, which outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation.

All said the issue was “toxic” and that wading into the debate always opened up a “world of pain.” They are also concerned about exposing divisions within Labour amid fears it could hurt the party at the next election. One moderate Labour MP told me that whenever she talked about the need for safe spaces for women, she got online abuse and was told she was an extremist.

Does this sound like a normal healthy situation? Is it a coincidence that the people being harmed by it are women?

Baroness Hayter said it was easier for Labour peers to speak out because they do not have a constituency party to answer to. She said Labour MPs were often worried about the abuse they and, particularly, their staff, would be subjected to.

“I’m afraid I see this as being a bit like antisemitism when it was first called out in the party and people were saying it was all being exaggerated and overblown and with this issue it is the same thing,” she said. “They are trying to squash us and stop us from raising it. Jewish groups were told to be quiet about antisemitism and now women are being told to shut up too. But this is misogyny. This is men telling women to get back in their box.”

And telling them with venom and visible, red-faced rage and hatred. It’s a disgusting situation.

Another peer said: “The treatment of Rosie and Miriam has actually attracted a lot more people to our side of the argument because they have finally seen the bullying and misogynistic behaviour for what it is. This is women being aggressively silenced by men, so it has been very graphic. Combine that with the issues around Scotland and self-identification and you start to see the reality of the threat to sex-based rights very visually.”

You’re goddam right. Thanks Lloyd! Thanks for being such a horrible piggy person right out in the open where everyone can see.

[The Labour Women’s Declaration working group] has been dismayed to discover that it has been banned from having a stall at this weekend’s regional Labour conference in London. The decision to ban the group from having a stall at last year’s annual conference in Liverpool led to a letter of protest signed by Labour MPs and peers.

A spokeswoman for the group said: “This refusal unfortunately builds on the party’s decision not to allow us a conference stand at last year’s national conference in Liverpool. This position clearly has to change. We have productive private conversations and have given detailed briefings to many Labour politicians, including Keir Starmer and Anneliese Dodds. But banning us from Labour events like this makes the party look ridiculous.

“Keir will regain the respect of so many women if he shows leadership right now and makes good his words about our rights to be heard. This entails giving both Labour Women’s Declaration and Lesbian Labour the right, just like other campaign groups, to run stalls at conferences, and to engage in respectful conversations within the party.”

Or he can just stick with bros before hos.

Bro journalist at the Herald talks to celebrity bro-woman India Willoughby. First sentence:

INDIA Willoughby is sitting at her kitchen table in Newcastle wearing the Versace top she bought as a treat after appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.

The scene is set! This is a woman he’s talking to. Womany womany womany woman. No self-respecting man wears a “top.” That’s laydee territory. No man buys himself a “top” as a “treat” – that’s a totally effeminate girly womany female feminine womany womany thing to do. ARE WE CLEAR???

Willoughby says he gets threats.

“Somebody will get killed. That’s where the rhetoric is going. Words kill, we know that. People are using their words and platforms to make people angry. If anyone is killed it will be a trans person. If that becomes Britain’s sobering moment then that’s tragic for this country, awful.”

I wonder how he thinks he knows that if anyone is killed it will be a trans person. It’s not as if women don’t get threats too.

Willoughby says trans people feel politically isolated, apart from Scotland’s SNP/Green government. “When it comes to the bigots, the scary thing is that for trans people nobody is coming to our rescue apart from Nicola Sturgeon.”

What rescue though? What rescue does he want? What more are people supposed to do?

I’m sure being trans is fraught with difficulty, but that’s mostly because of what it is, rather than opposition to the ideology’s takeover.

“The underlying narrative,” she adds, “is that trans people are frauds, out to trick you. That idea is really dangerous. The one dilemma all trans people face is telling prospective partners that you’re trans. It’s a minefield. It can be very dangerous. So creating this mood music that we’re frauds green-lights to some that we deserve a beating.”

Or, it’s the other way around. The underlying issue is that people are mostly not particularly eager to have a “prospective partner” who is the non-chosen sex, if you see what I mean. Straight people want partners of the opposite sex, lesbians and gays want partners of the same sex. That “dilemma” isn’t put there by “terfs” or women in general or feminists in general, it’s there already. It’s not our fault that 1. men aren’t going to be fooled by Willoughby and 2. straight men aren’t going to want Willoughby for a partner. I repeat: that’s not our fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.

Maybe that’s the whole of the secret sauce here. Trans people have made their romantic/sexual/marital lives vastly more difficult by being trans, and that’s not anyone’s fault. What to do? Where to direct all that energy when there’s no perpetrator? Onto women who say no, of course. Now there’s someone to fight with!

But something was changing in 2017, Willoughby believes. She noticed attitudes to trans people hardening when she appeared on Women’s Hour. “I expected a chat about being the first trans Loose Woman but as soon as I got there it was clear that this was me in the dock. Not long afterwards, this movement of just horrible people started to coalesce.”

Just horrible people are we? While Willoughby is the nicest warmest most generous loving person you’d ever want to meet?

She believes if trans rights are eroded, then gay and lesbian rights will be next, and eventually women’s rights. America’s “extremist” Christian lobby has already eroded women’s abortion rights, she adds. Trans people are “the gateway, the same people coming for us will eventually come for gays, lesbians and women”.

No, bub, you’re already coming for women, with a lot of success.

Willoughby says the rhetoric on both sides needs to calm down before someone gets hurt. She denounced any trans campaigner carrying placards like ‘Decapitate terfs’. “They shouldn’t be there. They’re helping nobody, certainly not trans people.” Willoughby has, and does use the word ‘terf’, though, defending the use of the term as it was originally coined by ‘radical feminists’. She would refrain from using it to any woman who said she found it offensive.

The generosity of the man! He knows we do “find it offensive” but he’ll keep on calling us unless we tell him personally that we “find it offensive.”

Neal Mackay posted 23 tweets promoting this interview. Seems like a lot.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Calling all bullies.

Oftentimes, and more often than not, this antisocial, vile rhetoric and drive stems from “deeply-held’ religious convictions.

How does that work?

“Is homosexuality a sin?” This is a question about religious morality. “Are people who claim to be homosexual not really attracted or aroused by others of the same sex?” This is a fact question which never really came up. Religious people took it for granted because the truth of it was established in the common ground of human experience.

“Is being transgender a sin?” Religious. “Are people born with an inner conviction of what sex they are and is this a more reliable indicator of their actual sex than their reproductive system?” Fact question from common ground which has not been established. It doesn’t matter if the religious parrot something about “God made men and women.” They think God made the mountains and lakes. Believing there are mountains and lakes is not a Deeply Held Religious Conviction if you’re not religious.

The stubborn refusal to examine concepts and arguments in order to separate religious from secular is far, far too common among atheists and humanists. The temptation to deal with opponents using the familiar, easy tactics of arguing for atheism is apparently too strong for them.

Reduxx has the story on the man in the women’s locker room in Santee:

The trans-identified male at the center of controversy after using the women’s locker rooms at a California YMCA has a disturbing social media history, Reduxx has found.

On January 11, video clips from a Santee City Council meeting went viral on social media after a teen girl took to the podium to report her concerns about a trans-identified male who had been allowed to use the women’s facilities at the local YMCA.

Rebecca Phillips, 17, became emotional as she recounted that she had seen “a naked male in the women’s locker room” one night after finishing her workout and using the showers. Phillips said that when she later questioned YMCA staff about the presence of the male in the women’s facilities, she was told that “he was indeed allowed to shower wherever he pleased.”

Reduxx tweeted the clip a few days ago; I saw it but I don’t think I posted about it. Apologies if this is a duplicate.

The clip led to protests being organized outside of the YMCA by citizens concerned about child safeguarding and women’s rights to single-sex spaces. On January 18, Christynne Lili Wrene Wood, 66, came forward during one of the protests and stated: “I’m the scary transgender woman who that child misidentified as a man.”

Easy for him. He’s not a teenage girl with a man in his 60s leering at her in the locker room. Easy for him to sneer.

Wood won a lawsuit against a fitness center that didn’t let him use the women’s locker room a couple of years ago, with an unknown financial award. He wins either way; girls and women lose.

On Wednesday evening, residents of Santee gathered again at a city council meeting to share their views on the incident during a public comment session. Wood was allowed to speak first, and was granted three minutes of podium time — one full minute more than other speakers were allowed.

Because he’s so marginalized.

A man with a trans pride flag sticking out of his jacket pocket also took to the podium and defended Wood’s presence in the women’s locker room. Jason Frye, President of the Humanist Association of San Diego, called Phillips dehumanizing names during his address.

“We need to protect people. We do not protect creepy little voyeurs spying on people in restrooms, causing problems, but people just minding their own business,” Frye said.

“I would recommend that the city take some kind of stance to say that that type of bigotry is not acceptable here, because it is clear that that type of license leads to suicide attempts,” Frye continued. “For those people who are calling to see people’s genitalia, I want to see your browser histories, because it seems like you’re quite obsessed with this.”

…

Two days ago, Wood gave a statement to the Times of San Diego in which he denounced the 17-year-old girl who had raised complaints as a “little witch” who had spread “lies from the very beginning.”

It’s all the teenage girl’s fault.

So this revolting Jason Frye dude has a public post on Facebook from three days ago, drumming up fans for his campaign to bully a teenage girl who doesn’t want leering men in the women’s locker room where she has to change her clothes.

Hello Humanists,

Tonight is an important night. Thoughts of our community have been proliferating and we have a hunger to get out into the general community and show support for deserving people and causes.

Last week a woman, Christynne Wood, was changing after her regular aqua aerobics routine and a teenager who saw Ms. Wood in the locker room went to the desk to complain about seeing a “man.”

Notice that the man gets the honor of being called a woman while the girl is genericized as a “teenager.” Notice also of course the moronic scare-quotes on “man,” as if nobody but a lunatic would call a man a man.

Christynne Wood is trans, post operative, and was minding her own business. Angered by the understandable ambivalence of YMCA staff, the teen went to express her outrage to the Santee City Council.

Wood is a man, so he wasn’t minding his own business by taking his clothes off in the women’s locker room. The “understandable ambivalence” of the Y staff is actually a failure or refusal to protect the privacy and safety of girls and women.

This resulted in two sizable protests outside of that Y location. One of our members was there on the side of equality and inclusion. He discussed this experience at last week’s Coffee & Conversation.

By “equality and inclusion” of course this foul sexist sadist means encouraging men to take over women’s spaces and force women out of public life.

The consensus of our community that arose from C&C was that there was an inappropriate act that day–patrons of the YMCA should be protected from creepy voyeurs spying on them and trying to give them trouble.

There’s the “creepy voyeur” insult, along with the ludicrous, abusive reversal of aggressor and victim.

There has been a conspicuous and marked increase in anti-trans animus and a vast proliferation of trans-specific regulations emerging across the United States. Oftentimes, and more often than not, this antisocial, vile rhetoric and drive stems from “deeply-held’ religious convictions.

As Humanists, it is our mission to stand with people who experience invidious discrimination and persecution when such affronts to dignity and compassion come from superstition and religious dogma.

Tonight Jason Frye (myself), Brian Delafayette, and others will be heading to Santee City Hall to support Christynne as she addresses the Council (during its regular business).

We will be meeting at City Hall around 5:30

That explains why there was a lot of applause and cheering for his grinning verbal assault on the teenage girl.

A woman comments “calling an underage girl who had to deal with indecent exposure a ‘creepy voyeur’ shows how morally bankrupt you are.”

Morally bankrupt, venomous, sadistic, smirking, smug – some “humanist.”

Well, this is breathtaking. I won’t need any more coffee for hours.

He didn’t even stop with “creepy little voyeur,” he called her a bunch more names too – including “puerile” which is funny because “puer” is Latin for “boy.”

Also he has a creepy (speaking of creepy) psychotic smile on his face the whole time he’s speaking, and whenever he says “trans women” he says it “trans women” as if to batter it into our brains and limbic systems.

Oh no, a crack in the edifice?

This Moira White – the one who’s a man.

Watch the clip. Watch “Natalee” roll his eyes as the newsreader tells him the shooter’s attorneys are now saying he’s non-binary. Then watch him tell the truth about the whole ridiculous ideology.

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on Dim bulbs.

I’m afraid you’re the one who is misled. I’ve been a part of the LGBTQA+ community for the last thirty two years since I came out in 1990. I have trans friends. This entire thing is just like it was then for gay people – demonization, misrepresentation, lies and hatred.

But it’s not “just like it was for gay people.” The things that gay people wanted didn’t affect anyone else. The accusations that gay men “recruited” young men to be gay were false. The LG purposely and scrupulously separated themselves from the pedophilia activists like NAMBLA. The “demonization, misrepresentation, lies, and hatred” against gay men and lesbians were false accusations and irrational fears.

Here, we’re talking about a trans person who is a rapist. Rapists are rightly “demonized,” because they are vile predators who hurt other people. Calling this trans person — and a whole host of others — rapists, predators, criminals is not a “misrepresentation.” It’s not a lie. Rapists are deservedly hated. Here, the accusations are true. That’s what this guy is defending. He’s lying when he says it’s “just like” the unjust animus against gay people. Here, the demonization is a correct representation, is not a lie, and is properly condemned, if not exactly “hated.” He doesn’t know what “just like” means.

And there’s the broader point that what LGB activists sought did not affect anyone else. The T project is entirely different. They demand, not equal rights, but special privileges and dispensations that are not rights at all. Their demands directly affect the rights of others, primarily the rights of women and girls. Men and boys who violate the boundaries of women and girls, and who demand to do so as a matter of right, raise huge red flags for the safety of women and girls. A significant predictor of which men are the most dangerous to women is the violation of women’s boundaries. The T movement is hellbent on the wholesale destruction of women’s boundaries. Women are 100% justified in fear and wariness toward such men. It’s not “demonization” to point out that men who call themselves women present a heightened risk to women, and that their demands destroy women’s rights. It’s not a “misrepresentation” to point out the conflict between T demands and women’s rights. As for “lies,” the entire T edifice is built on a colossal lie, that human beings can change sex just by wishing. The “lies” are entirely on the T side of the argument. The lies are so stupid that it’s astonishing that they ever gained any traction at all, but here we are.

This Tom Coates person doesn’t know how reason and logic and words work. He’s still purposely defending a rapist and changing the subject away from the rapist. Almost like a dear Muslima. You can’t talk about the issue directly in front of you, because of this other issue over there. That kind of dishonesty makes me distrust everything about the T movement and its advocates.

All this time I didn’t realize that Tucker Carlson has been ranting about the loss of sex appeal in M&Ms. I had no idea.

“America, let’s talk,” M&M’s began on social media on Monday. Later, “We have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies.”

What happened? And what is a spokescandy?

The former is easy to answer: Tucker Carlson. The Fox News host embarked on a crusade against the M&M’s the moment the treatmakers disgusted him last year by removing the green M&M’s much beloved go-go boots in favor of sensible sneakers: “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous,” he groused. “Until the moment you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them.”

So Tucker Carlson does want to have a drink with an M&M? Or did before they underwent a wardrobe change?

I can see it now – the dim lighting, the groups of friends, the couples, the cigarette smoke, the bowls of peanuts, and Tucker Carlson at a table in the corner with…an M&M.

This vigorous rebuttal to the wokefication of sweets didn’t end there — [when] in a 2015 promotional image she was depicted with her hand on the brown M&M’s knee, Carlson worried that she “is now a lesbian, maybe?” And he decried the introduction of Purple, whom he described as “plus-sized” and “obese.” (She’s just a peanut M&M.)

So I guess he won’t be taking her to Bemelmans.

Oh give it a rest ffs.

Women can help men commit rape, sure. Women can’t literally rape. The fact that one court decided to call helping men rape “rape” doesn’t change that fact. Women can also in theory shove objects up women, but that too is not rape, even if some court says it is.

Charlotte Proudman seems unusually horrible.

Frying pans and fires.

Nicola Sturgeon faces another trans storm after a decision was made to house one of Scotland’s most violent prisoners in a women’s jail. The Record can reveal that volatile Tiffany Scott – who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns – has been rubber-stamped for transfer to a jail that aligns with her chosen gender.

Scott, 31, has been repeatedly refused the switch over several years but senior management relented in recent weeks. It is understood that the transfer is still planned – despite the First Minister instructing a U-turn on a decision to house double rapist Isla Bryson at all-women jail Cornton Vale, Stirling, on Thursday.javascript:void(0)

Last night the Scottish Government faced calls to make another embarrassing U-turn on Scott. A source said: “Of all the female trans prisoners in the estate, Scott has been considered the most dangerous.”

Interesting choice then. “Let’s start with the most dangerous man who calls himself a woman. Once he I mean she is in, the rest will be a doddle.”

The source continued:

“This highly disturbed prisoner has attacked female staff during time in prison, has admitted stalking a young girl and has been one of the most menacing people inside Scottish jails. It’s madness to send her to a women’s jail – there needs to be a better solution than this.”

…

Scott, 32, from Kinglassie, Fife, is being held in segregation at LowMoss Prison, near Glasgow.

She has assaulted inmates, security officers and female nurses in various jails. She self-harmed and opened veins with her teeth before squirting blood at prison officers.

In 2010, Scott, while still Burns, attacked a nurse while escaping from a Cheshire hospital while under detention, throwing roof tiles at police during a siege on the hospital roof. In 2013, Scott, while still Burns, was sentenced to 14 months for stalking a 13-year-old girl from a cell at Polmont Prison, near Falkirk, by sending letters.

He sounds very Hannibal Lecter, doesn’t he.

Speaking of Katie [Colin] Montgomerie, James Esses provides a new piece of information about him.

A few months ago Esses received an email from a father concerned about his daughter’s belief that she was trans and needed hormones and surgery. They talked about therapy.

I explained to ‘Alfred’ that if his daughter was not open to speaking to someone, that “it could end up being counter-productive”. It is common therapeutic knowledge that someone who feels as if they are forced to go to therapy is not going to be receptive to the experience and is, therefore, less likely to benefit from it.

‘Alfred’ came back and said to me that his daughter had made an “agreement” with him that she would go to therapy.

And so I provided ‘Alfred’ with the names of a handful of therapists that I know, who support ethical, explorative therapy for children with gender dysphoria.

There it ended, until –

Yesterday, I was contacted by a parent, who, for the purposes of this article, I will call David. David told me that he had a son who said he was ‘trans’ and had been self-medicating from GenderGP over a period of time. His son’s school were aware of this but never informed the family. This was an extremely shocking story to hear, although it is not the first time I have heard such a thing.

Then he told me about ‘Alfred’.  

‘Alfred’ was not real. All along, it was David’s son posing as someone else’s father. David discovered this when he logged on to his son’s Twitter account, concerned by who he might be engaging with online.

Guess who it turned out to be that David was engaging with? Katie [Colin] Montgomerie. There are screenshots of conversations between David’s kid and Montgomerie.

In the conversation with Katy, David’s son writes:

“Hey, I recently made a burner email and went back and forth with James Esses in the hopes that he’d give me a list of his “colleagues” (people he would want doing therapy on tarns (sic) kids) and I got a pretty scary list back; if you’re interested please let me know.”

Here is a child, clearly in a vulnerable position (more on this below), stating to an adult that he has engaged in deception and lies, in order to try and gain information.

Katy does not respond by questioning the lies and deception. Nor does Katy ask him about his mental wellbeing and why he feels the need to take such drastic steps.

Katy simply states: “Yes definitely”. He promptly provides Katy with the list of explorative therapists that I had previously provided him with.

Read the rest.

Katy (erstwhile Colin) Montgomerie gave a staff pride talk at Edinburgh University yesterday.

Yeah congrats. There’s nothing like inviting a man to talk about how horrible feminists are for making students feel empowered…unless they’re female students of course.

They don’t teach flat earth or creationism in school but they do teach that men who say they are women are women.

We know the answer to that, he’ll go as far as he possibly can. Always.

What I wonder is why staff at Edinburgh would want to hear a talk by Katy (erstwhile Colin) Montgomerie.

By the way, this just in about that awful terf JK Rowling:

JK Rowling magicked up hundreds of thousands of pounds to save more than a hundred female lawyers and their families facing murder in Afghanistan.

The Harry Potter author made her huge donation when Britain and America pulled out of Kabul at speed, leaving hundreds of women judges, prosecutors and defence counsel under threat from the Taliban.

Along with a million dollars from businessman and philanthropist Lord Michael Hintze, plus large sums from other prominent figures and smaller donations from the public, it meant a total of 508 Afghans could be flown to safety.

In a life-or-death cloak and dagger operation the female lawyers and their families had to hide in basements before they were smuggled to airports and flown to freedom.

The generosity of Miss Rowling, author of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban among other titles, in the 2021 rescue only emerged on Thursday in a House of Lords debate.

Lord David Alton told the chamber how the writer and Lord Hintze ‘in a Schindler’s list moment’ came forward to help when veteran human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy needed money to rescue female lawyers – mainly judges – and their families.

Lord Alton said that, thanks to ‘spontaneous, generous and very substantial’ private funding; ‘Some 500 people were evacuated – 103 were women lawyers, all of whom, with their children and husbands, were on Taliban kill lists.

But please, Tom Coates and Ryan John Butcher, do go on telling us what a horrible right-wing terf Rowling is.

More progressive men step up to defend the rapist from the meany women who won’t call him Sister.

Oh really? And how does he know that? How can he know that?

There is no such “community.” It’s forced teaming.

Well, that’s quite something.

Ooooh yes, that’s the important thing here – not the rapist who pretends to be a woman, not the rapist who pretends to be a woman by wearing slasher fingernails and platinum hair where his face is supposed to be, not the rapist who pretends to be a woman and wants to be in a women’s prison so that he can terrorize and prey on them – no no no no no, the important thing here is that JK Rowling mentioned his name (which has been widely reported in mainstream news outlets).

Via

Updating to add another hot take.

No it isn’t, actually. Not everyone – nowhere near everyone – agrees that “deadnaming” is a thing at all, let alone “a form of persecution” let alone “a form of persecution of a vulnerable minority” by which he means a woman doing it to a man who is a convicted rapist. So no, “deadnaming” in the sense of using the real name of a convicted rapist is very far from recognised as a form of persecution of a vulnerable minority. The rapist is not the vulnerable party here.

Those people in Rio Verde Foothills are still complaining because they decided to live in an unincorporated settlement in the desert during a drought and for some reason no one is willing to give them water,

There is only one paved road, no street lights, storm gutters or pipes in the ground. Instead residents have wells – or water tanks outside their homes, which they used to fill at a local pipe serviced by Scottsdale.

Why did they build there then? If there’s no municipal water supply, why decide “This is where we’ll build our new house”?

Laura Weaver told the Guardian her community didn’t “want a handout” from Scottsdale. They want time to figure out a plan and, to her, Scottsdale shutting the water off is unneighborly and un-American, she said.

So she does want a handout from Scottsdale.

Being neighborly is all very well, but settling in a desert with no access to water as climate change spirals out of control is idiotic. I suspect Scottsdale doesn’t think it has enough water to share with feckless neighbors.

“Think of the sacrifices some Americans have made for each other. And then these people are sitting here saying, ‘Well, you know, you should just dry up and die.’ Really? I just find it mind-blowingly unpatriotic,” she said.

Mm. It’s their fault. Scottsdale owes her their water, but she and her neighbors don’t owe Scottsdale the good sense not to build a town in a place with no water source. Make it make sense.

Incorporating could give the community more options for water supply in future but forming an official town or city brings requirements, such as paved roads, street lights, more taxation and rules. This would be expensive but also change the secluded, quaint feel of Rio Verde Foothills, where people own chickens, donkeys, horses and ride motorbikes straight out their doors to nearby Tonto national forest.

Fine then, keep your secluded quaint feel, but find your own damn water.

Entitlement is a dangerous drug.

It goes back to a booboo with the counting.

Twenty years ago, scientists overestimated the amount of water in the Colorado River, having measured based on an abnormally rainy season, said Sinjin Eberle, intermountain west communications director for American Rivers, a non-profit campaigning to protect and restore US waterways.

Oops.

The river has 20% less water than it did in 2000, Eberle said. More than 40 million people in seven states served by the Colorado River basin – Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico and Arizona – depend on the mighty but dwindling watercourse that flows through the Grand Canyon.

Now, as rain is scarcer and the region’s population has increased, there will be more water shortages, even as sprawling developments insist on golf courses, grassy parks and fountains.

Even in Rio Verde Foothills new home construction carries on apace, while the water is not there to support expansion.

Never mind, just blame it all on Scottsdale.

Sometimes a “blanket” rule is what’s necessary.

The case of Isla Bryson, the transgender double rapist who was initially sent to a female prison, must not result in a blanket ban on trans women serving their sentences in women’s facilities, the campaign group Scottish Trans has said.

Nonsense. Trans women are men, and as such should not be in women’s facilities. The end.

“It is right that this should be decided on an individualised risk assessment basis,” Valentine said.

“For example, a trans woman transitioned for 20 years, who is in prison for a non-violent offence like financial fraud, might pose no risk to other women in custody, but be at significant risk herself if accommodated on the male estate.”

I don’t care. Don’t make his problem women’s problem. Figure out some other way to solve the problem. Women don’t exist to be a safe haven for men.